Couple of weeks ago, a Finnish game researcher, Mirva Peltoniemi defended her dissertation at Tampere University of Technology, Finland at the Department of Business Information management and Logistics.

There has been couple of very interesting Finnish game research dissertations coming out this spring, but this one is especially relevant from the perspective of GaIn.

Mirva Peltoniemi is describing and analysing the evolution of games industry, taking deeper look also into Finnish games industry. She is applying a life-cycle theory (originated from Klepper and cars industry, if I understood correctly) on games as an example of one of the cultural industries. On her work, Peltoniemi is proving that the theory can be applied to cultural domain as well as possibility of refining the largely adopted theory further. According to Peltoniemi, games industry is challenging couple of the propositions of the life-cycle theory in a following  manner:

1. innovative activity has not levelled off in either hardware or software
2. game development has remained an unconcentrated industry (meaning versatile designs as opposed to dominant design)

The dissertation is a quality work and was especially appraised by the opponents for its internationally exemplary literary research. If you are interested to understand the life-cycle theory and the evolution of games industry, take a look at this fine piece!

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